Part 37 (1/2)

'Why?' Doone asked.

'Because I look after the old b.u.g.g.e.r now, that's why. Wouldn't mind having a snap of him.'

'Better take another one,' Doone advised him. 'By rights this belongs to the la.s.s's parents.'

'Well,' he later demanded of me, after we'd left. 'What do you think?'

'It's your job to think,' I protested.

He half smiled. 'There's a long way to go yet. If you think of anything, you tell me. I'll listen to everything anyone wants to say. I'm not proud. I don't mind the public telling me the answers. Make sure everyone knows that, will you?'

'Yes,' I said.

The telephone in Sh.e.l.lerton House began ringing that afternoon in a clamour that lasted for days. However reticent Doone had been, the news had spread at once like a bush fire through the village that another young woman connected with Tremayne Vickers' house and stables had been found dead. Newspapers, quickly informed, brusquely demanded to be told where, when and why. Dee-Dee repeated and repeated that she didn't know until she was almost in tears. I took over from her after a while and dispensed enormous courtesy and goodwill but no facts, of which, at the time anyway, I knew very few.

I worked on the book and answered the phone most of Friday and didn't see Doone at all, but on Sat.u.r.day I learned that he had spent the day before scattering fear and consternation.

Tremayne had asked if I would prefer to go to Sandown with Fiona, Harry and Mackie, saying he thought I might find it more illuminating: he himself would be saddling five runners at Chepstow and dealing with two lots of demanding owners besides. 'To be frank, you'd be under my feet. Go and carry things for Mackie.'

With old-fas.h.i.+oned views, which Mackie herself tolerated with affection, he persisted in thinking pregnant women fragile. I wondered if Tremayne understood how little Perkin would like my carrying things for Mackie and determined to be discreet.

'Fiona and Harry are taking Mackie,' Tremayne said, almost as if the same thought had occured to him. 'I'll check that they'll take you too, though it's a certainty if they have room.'

They had room. They collected Mackie and me at the appointed time and they were very disturbed indeed.

Harry was driving. Fiona twisted round in the front seat to speak to Mackie and me directly and with deep lines of worry told us that Doone had paid two visits to them the day before, the first apparently friendly and the second menacing in the extreme.

'He seemed all right in the morning,' Fiona said. 'Chatty and easy-going. Then he came back in the evening...' She s.h.i.+vered violently, although it was warm in the car, '- and he more or less accused Harry of strangling that b.l.o.o.d.y girl.'

'What?' Mackie said. 'That's ridiculous.'

'Doone doesn't think so,' Harry said gloomily. 'He says she was definitely strangled. And did he show you that photo of me with Chickweed?'

Mackie and I both said yes.

'Well, it seems he got it enlarged. I mean, blown up really big. He said he wanted to see me alone, without Fiona, and he showed me the enlargement which was just of me, not the horse. He asked me to confirm that I was wearing my own sungla.s.ses in the photo. I said of course I was. Then he asked me if I was wearing my own belt, and I said of course. He asked me to look carefully at the buckle. I said I wouldn't be wearing anyone else's things. Then he asked me if the pen clipped onto the racecard I was holding in the photo was mine also- and I got a bit s.h.i.+rty and demanded to know what it was ail about.' He stopped for a moment, and then in depression went on. 'You won't believe it- but they found my sungla.s.ses and my belt and my gold pen lying with that girl, wherever she was, and Doone won't tell us where for some G.o.d-silly reason. I don't know how the h.e.l.l those things got there. I told Doone I hadn't seen any of them for ages and he said he believed it. He thought they'd been with Angela Brickell all these months- that I'd dropped them when I was with her.'

He stopped again, abruptly, and at that point added no more.

Fiona, in a strong mixture of indignation and alarm, said, 'Doone demanded to know precisely where Harry had been on the day that girl went missing and also he said he might want to take Harry's fingerprints.'

'He thinks I killed her,' Harry said. 'It's obvious he does.'

'It's ridiculous,' Mackie repeated. 'He doesn't know you.'

'Where were you on that day?' I asked. 'I mean, you might have a perfect alibi.'

'I might have,' he said, 'but I don't know where I was. Could you say for certain what you were doing on the Tuesday afternoon of the second week of June last year?'

'Not for sure,' I said.